BROKEN 'WING': Apparently shamed by my revelation last week that he ripped off a storyline from blogger Meryl Yourish, writer/producer Aaron Sorkin has announced that he will leave "The West Wing" at the conclusion of this season.
But seriously, Sorkin's departure comes in the wake of one of the quickest meltdowns by a formerly respectable series in the history of network television. In its first two seasons the show was important, entertaining, and always "on," combining a top-flight cast with excellent writing and a gravitas shared by few other shows on the air. I already articulated last fall how the show fell off the cliff; it almost instantly lost relevance after George W. Bush became president and September 11 attacks took its storylines further and further away from reality, to the point where the characters are reduced to acting out unimaginitive re-hashes of real-life events, while worrying about calamities in fictional Middle Eastern countries with silly names like "Kundun" and "Kumar." The show's re-election campaign arc was especially weak, as Sorkin made the Republican candidate into a dimwitted Bush surrogate, for no reason other than to act out his fantasy of Bush losing a landslide election to a Democrat.
The show has also been plagued the past two years by casting departures (most notably Rob Lowe), and was also hurt by backstage infighting and the personal problems of Sorkin himself, a celebrated former addict who was arrested last year on drug charges.
This year "West Wing" experienced a precipitious ratings drop, leading to friction between the creator and the executives at NBC; Sorkin, known for his Coppola-like tendency to drive himself nuts in the creative process, likely decided he'd had enough, or perhaps would like to create another show of his own, away from the heavy-handed network suits. And while "West Wing" is likely to continue for at least another year, it will in all probability go down in history along with "Twin Peaks," "Northern Exposure," and other such shows that began with abject brilliance, yet for whatever reason just couldn't keep it up.